


Shorts and Other Nonsense

by Ardatli



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Multi, Prompt Fic, Random & Short, Some are sexy some are not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2018-07-19 10:29:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7357624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I occasionally do prompt fills and prompt calls, either on Tumblr or elsewhere, and this is a collection of those. These are predominantly short, generally unedited other than for typos and fact-checking, and tend to be part of flash-writing challenges (get it all out in one burst without a lot of pre-planning). If such things amuse you, find them herein. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Happy Trails

**Author's Note:**

> At one point I had a collection of older ones up on AO3 -- it seems to have vanished into the abyss though. Here are those again, plus new ones as they happen.

_Prompt: Teddy's reaction when he discovers that Billy has hair on his chest?_

 

Thursday afternoons were just about the best thing ever. Eli had a shift at the library, so team practice didn’t happen, and Billy’s brothers had swim practice and Hebrew school, so no-one else would be home, for, like, hours. He and Teddy had started off trying to do homework, but their books were scattered on the floor now and he was straddling Teddy’s knees, hyper-aware of the painfully aching bulge in his jeans and trying – really, really trying – not to stare at Teddy’s crotch to see if he was feeling the same way.

It was enough for now, just to be able to sink his fingers into Teddy’s hair and kiss his lips in as many different ways as they could think up; slowly and gently, a little rough and dry from the winter cold, then hot and wet, Teddy’s tongue thick and heavy in Billy’s mouth.

_I wonder if he’ll let me touch his thing? I really really want to know what it feels like, how big he is, what sounds he’ll make when I do._

As if he’d heard Billy’s super-dirty thoughts, Teddy’s hands slid up on Billy’s sides, leaving the place where he’d been clutching Billy’s hips like a drowning man, and sliding up, up under his shirt to rub against his ribs. He was taking Billy’s shirt with him, bunching the fabric up in the crooks of his thumbs, and Billy froze.

“Sorry,” Teddy mumbled after a half-beat. He broke the kiss and looked at Billy, a concerned frown creasing his forehead. “Am I going too fast? I didn’t mean to jump the gun.” He let go of the material and smoothed it back down over Billy’s ribs, tickling him. Billy tried to hold in the laugh, but couldn’t.

“No, I mean no don’t stop, I mean- maybe?” He chewed on his bottom lip in indecision. Teddy was flushed, super-flushed, and his shirt was rumpled, and when Billy followed the line of buttons down, Teddy shifted uncomfortably and his pants were tight over an unmistakeable bulge. He was hard for Billy, and he was right there and he wanted Billy as much as Billy wanted him.

_Holy shit._

“Gonna have to be clearer than that, Bee,” Teddy teased, but his concerned face stayed on. “I’m not going to lie; I really want to make out with you, but only if you want to, too.”

“It’s a bad idea. Not the making-out part, but the shirt-off part,” Billy said, trying to make it into a joke. “One look at the blinding fish-belly white of my stomach and you’ll be running in terror.”

“All the better to not get skin-cancer with, my dear.” Teddy curled his arms around Billy’s hips and tugged him closer, dropped tender soft kisses along his eyelids, his forehead, and then the end of his nose. “I don’t care about that stuff,” he informed Billy seriously. “I like _you_ , remember?”

He leaned in really close, right in to Billy’s ear. “I want to lick your nipples.”

“Eeeeeeeyeaaaaahhhh,” Billy breathed out, very coherently. Had he ever been this hard before, this desperate to rub up against something, anything? And he was right there in Teddy’s lap. He shifted, got his leg over one of Teddy’s and ground down, hard. _Better; so much better, oh god._

Teddy made a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a yelp, his hands flying to Billy’s butt and holding him in place. “Hnnnng,” he added for good measure.

“We could just do this?” Billy rolled his hips again.

“You change in the bathroom before practice, you don’t want me to see you with your shirt off, what are you hiding?” Teddy teased, and it felt like his hands were shaking as he gripped Billy’s buttcheeks, held him in place against Teddy’s thigh. “Because seriously, I’ve seen you in spandex, and you’re smoking hot. So no crap about being skinny.”

“You’re insane. Or blind.”

“Insane for you and your amazing legs. So what is it?” Teddy eyed him, laughter in his grin. “A third nipple? A jailhouse tattoo? An illuminati sigil branded over your breastbone?”

He could get out of the interrogation; he could get up and go back to balancing chemical equations, make his parents happy by _not_ making out with his ridiculously hot boyfriend while the house was empty.

Or he could stay on Teddy’s lap, their legs wrapped around each other, the thick bulge of  Teddy’s dick (because of _course_ he’d be freaking huge) pushing against Billy’s erection through the fabric of their pants... and explain himself.

“None of the above. It’s called having Polish heritage,” he mumbled, already halfway through pulling off his shirt. “And probably some Mediterranean something in there somewhere.”

The black hair had started growing around Billy’s nipples way earlier than for most of the guys at school, and changing for gym class had gone from ‘irritant’ to ‘severely mentally and physically traumatic’ within weeks. He wasn’t a gorilla or anything; the trail down from his navel to his groin was thicker than the stuff on his chest, but against his not-exactly-suntanned skin tone... yeah. Probably not at all what Teddy, physically perfect, was expecting.

_Brace for impact._

But Teddy didn’t laugh, or call him ‘monkey boy’ or anything like that at all. His breath hitched, which made Billy look down, and then Teddy splayed his hands out over Billy’s chest, with this expression of _wonder_ in his eyes that made Billy wonder if the guy had gone blind.

“Tee?” he asked, hesitantly.

“You’re _fuzzy,_ ” Teddy replied, with such glee that all Billy could do was blink. “Oh my God, Bee, that’s hot.”

“You’re nuts.”

 “Nuh-unh. You have a _happy trail._ ” Teddy’s fingers went wandering, down to Billy’s waistband, tentatively exploring. “That’s _awesome._ ”

“Holy shit goddamn,” Billy breathed out, aware of nothing other than the teasing brushes of Teddy’s skin against his own, getting so close and then _not_ going there nearly enough. “You actually like it? I mean, guys on TV wax it all off these days, and I thought-”

“Don’t you dare.” Teddy fell back onto the bed and pulled Billy along with him, he slipped his leg up between Billy’s and pressed up into Billy’s groin, giving them both something to ride against. The kiss was a desperate one, full of lust and heat and tongues sliding against one another. “That’s man hair. Super-sexy. I want to touch it.”

“This better not be your way of hinting that you’re into furries.”

 He felt Teddy’s shift before he saw it, looking down in surprise. Teddy had gone full Hollywood werewolf on him, sprouting fur along his cheeks and neck, his eyebrows thick and heavy. “Aroooooo,” Teddy mocked him, grinning as much as he could with a wolf-face.

“I hate you so much.”

“You love me and you know it.”

“Put your own face back on, and I’ll prove it.”

“Spoilsport.”

“It’s hard to kiss you with that many teeth involved. This is better.”

“So tell me – how far down _does_ your happy trail go?”

_I made the right choice, for once. Everything about this boy is the right choice._

Billy stared down at the beautiful boy underneath him, his blond hair splayed out on Billy’s pillow, his firm, needy body rising and falling beneath him at exactly the right tempo and pressure to drive Billy out of his mind.

_He loves me._

Billy grinned. “My parents won’t be home for another hour. Wanna find out?” 

 


	2. Far Flung Friends

_Prompt: Hanging out at the library with Eli because Eli, I miss Eli. Thanks!_

 

“How’s he doing?” Eli frowned at the computer screen, watching Teddy check back over his shoulder like he was making sure the coast was clear. The library was weekday-morning quiet, only a handful of pensioners hanging out in the newspaper room, which meant Eli could screw around some without getting busted for it. 

“Better, most days.” Teddy shrugged. “It’s a process. He’s back at school and Rebecca’s set him up with a tutor, so we don’t have as much time to hang out as we used to. But overall?” A smile quirked up in one corner of his mouth, even though his eyes were sad. “Better.”

“That’s good.” Even as Eli said it, he knew it sounded lame. What else was there to say? He was on the other side of the country – his own choice. There weren’t nearly as many supervillain issues in Arizona, for whatever reason. It didn’t mean he’d stopped caring. It did mean he couldn’t do jack-shit to help. “You gonna be around tonight? I get off shift at six my time. We can go kill zombies.”  

Teddy glanced down, not meeting Eli’s eyes. _Aw, man._ “I’ve got some stuff to do tonight; what about Friday?”

“Isn’t that date night?”

“Not so much, these days.”

“Hang in there, Teddy.” And there went his total lack of comfort-ability again. “It’ll work out.”

“Easy enough to say from there.”

“Low blow, dude.”

Teddy glanced up and over, at something off-screen. “I gotta go; talk to you later.”

“Yeah.” Eli watched the call end and closed the program down. Some funny ache that he couldn’t put a name to thumped in his stomach. _Some things were never supposed to change._

That hadn’t been part of the deal, when he’d left.

The smell hit him next, and he sat up, peering around the vacant lower level; was that movement in among the stacks? Something that smelled distinctly like cheesesteak, whipping in and around the shelving?

A perfect stack of books appeared beside his chair, the mathematically squared-off vertical pillar suddenly there, in the blink of an eye. “Knock it off, Tommy,” Eli growled.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Tommy Shepherd appeared in the chair across the desk from Eli, one leg propped up on his other knee, his speed glasses totally incongruous along with his butter-yellow leather jacket, t-shirt and blue jeans. “No _human being_ would stack books that way. I think you’re haunted, dude.” And he slid the still-hot wrapped sandwich across the desk toward Eli.

Eli arched an eyebrow. “Seriously? You mess up my shelving and then try to bribe me with cheesesteaks?”

“You want deep-dish pizza? I can do that.” Tommy lifted himself up out of the chair, obviously pretending. If he’d wanted to go, he would have been gone and back before Eli could blink.

“Sit down,” Eli grumbled, unwrapping the sandwich. The faint smell blossomed into something amazing and totally unavailable in –

“-How you’re surviving in buttfuck, Arizona, I’ll never get.” Tommy shoved aside Eli’s carefully sorted rack of folders and thumped his feet up on top of Eli’s desk. The soles of his shoes were wearing through, like always, the tread totally gone and the rubber almost transparent at his heels and the balls of his feet. “Come back to New York, man. Kate’s never around anymore and the loser-lovebirds are too busy with their own angst. It’s getting _boring_.” 

“Did you get it all done?” Eli changed the subject, his mouth full.

Tommy scowled. “You suck, dude. I mean it. You really, most sincerely suck.”

“I didn’t ask to be involved, remember?” Eli poked the books that Tommy had stacked beside him ( _romance novels? Why?)_ and the stack teetered, but didn’t fall. A burst of wind and they were gone again. Hopefully back in place, rather than tucked in among the kids’ books and science texts, like last time. “No bibles in the fiction section!” Eli shouted, just to be safe. “They get testy about that shit down here.”

“Spoilsport,” Tommy’s voice echoed back. And then he was in his chair, and he dumped a handful of books on the desk between them. “Anyway, _yes, professor_. I got it done.”

Eli leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “All of it?”

“I read them all, yes, thank you.” Tommy stuck his hands behind his head, put his feet up on the desk again.  

_I should call Mr. Fantastic and see what he can do for Tommy’s shoes. It’s not helpful for a speedster to-_

No; where was the guarantee that the Fantastic four would even take his call? He’d been a fraud, and now he was a nobody.

_Kate will do it. They all liked her better anyway._

“Longest five minutes of my _life_ , you should know.” Tommy kicked over a copy of Les Mis from the top of the pile. “Did you know he wrote, like, an entire goddamn chapter on sewers? _SEWERS,_ Eli.” He paused, then, “Still better than fast-forwarding through the movie, mind you. And no singing.” 

“It’ll be on the GED next week, that’s why.” Eli pushed Tommy’s feet and he dropped them lightly to the floor. “Come on, Tommy. This is your future at stake. You asked me to help-“ Tommy blurred and when he resolved again into a solid mass, he had a hot dog in his hands. “Can’t you be serious about this!?”

Tommy grinned, a new light in his eyes. “Serious? I am _wild_.”

Eli blinked.

Tommy leaned in, stretching, catlike, all the muscles in his shoulders and arms rippling. He covered one of Eli’s hands with his own, then in a movement so quick that Eli couldn’t begin to see it, never mind anticipate, he hauled him to his feet. “Deep dish, oh leader-man,” he said, that wicked grin spreading wide across his face. “In Chicago, right now. My treat.”

 


	3. Is This What You Came For

_Prompt: I'd really like to see a Billy/Teddy pwp with a use of powers in bed. I'll leave it up to you which of them is making creative use of their abilities (or both). Thanks!_

 

“You don’t have to do this, you know. I like you best exactly the way you are.”

Teddy snorted, grabbed Billy’s hand and pulled him up out of the desk chair. “I know that, dumbbutt. That’s why this will be fun instead of creepy.” Billy still looked dubious, so Teddy leaned in and kissed him, deeply and with tongue. That got him molding up against Teddy’s body like he always did, totally boneless and without hesitation. It was almost worth abandoning his original plans and just... throwing Billy to the bed right there, but that wouldn’t be a birthday thing. That would just be another Wednesday.

“Nope,” Teddy said gleefully, putting his hands up against Billy’s shoulders and gently (so gently, careful on the super-strength) pushing him back a step. “I promised you a fantasy, remember? Name it. Aragorn? Nightwing? Ooh, I know – one of the Sean Cody guys.” He shifted as he rattled off the names, the expressions of dubiousness, mistrust and exasperation flitting across Billy’s face cracking him up.

“No, no, absolutely not.” Billy ran his hand over his face, though he did peek – just a little – when Teddy shifted into a half-way reasonable version of one the guys that Billy had locked away in his pseudo-secret bookmark file. “He’s gay-for-pay, just for the record,” Billy muttered, his ears turning red at the tops.

Back to being himself, then, just until he could figure out something that would make Billy’s cheeks go as red as his ears and his pupils dilate. “That’s no fun,” Teddy agreed. Looking around their tiny apartment for inspiration netted him a handful of ideas, none of them perfect, but then – oh, then...

Hair darker, shoulder breadth could stay, lose the round edges off his cheeks that seemed to stay despite the fact that he was almost 20. Change his shirt to a black one with the S logo-

Billy blinked at him, then stabbed his finger at Teddy’s chest. “You’re doing that thing again where your clothes aren’t real. Do you have any idea how unfair that is, walking around all day just _knowing_ that my boyfriend could actually be naked, and I’m the only one who knows?”

“It’s amazing that you ever get any work done,” Teddy agreed cheerfully. “But I do have pants on. This time.” He finished the change.

There they went; Billy’s eyes went wide and he bit his bottom lip compulsively. Teddy could see a glimpse of his new face reflected in the mirror on the wall; he made a half-decent Superboy, if he did say so himself.

“I can take them off,” he suggested, changing his voice to a half-register deeper. Billy’s cheeks went red.

_Bingo._

“C’mon, Rob,” Teddy/Kon twisted his grin into a knowing smirk and stepped in closer to Billy. “Let me make one of your fantasies come true.”

Billy reached out and cupped Teddy’s cheek in his hand, seemed to be studying his face for a moment, and stared deep into his eyes. That was apparently something that satisfied him, because he rose up on his toes and kissed Teddy again, his mouth warm and slick, his tongue teasing at the edge of Teddy’s lower lip.

They half-walked half-stumbled back toward their bed, Billy’s hand tucked into Teddy’s belt, but Teddy’s knees were the ones that bumped up against the bedframe, and Billy was the one pushing him over, with a burst of spell-enhanced strength, so that Teddy ended up flat on his back on their old mattress.

“What, now?” Teddy asked, laughing. “I thought you had a thing for strong boys.”

Billy’s grin widened and he muttered something under his breath, waving his hand. Their one-room student apartment vanished, the pile of laundry in the corner and stacks of textbooks on the table transforming, melting away to become someone else’s bedroom entirely. Out the window, now open and covered with gently blowing dark curtains, the Batsignal wove patterns of light against the clouds. “If you don’t think Tim would be the world’s bossiest bottom,” Billy said, briskly wrapping a tie around Teddy’s wrists and slip-knotting him to the bedframe, “then we haven’t been reading the same comics at all.”

Teddy tugged against the bindings experimentally, and the knots held, safe and snug around his arms. He could pull and tug on those all he wanted, as long as he didn’t do it too hard, and the knots would keep him safe. The end he could pull to release himself was right there, but he wasn’t going to need it.

The cool Gotham breeze rippled over his skin as Billy straddled him and slid his hands up under Teddy’s shirt; he made the shirt vanish before things got awkward around his shoulders and tied-up hands. Billy propped himself up over top of Teddy, pressed kisses to his mouth, his jaw, down the length of his neck to his collarbone (not his, but the one he was borrowing for right now; it didn’t matter, none of it did, because Billy’s dick was hard against him through Billy’s jeans, and his tongue and teeth were alternately hot and sharp against Teddy’s skin, sending shocks and ripples of pleasure down through his body. Those were plenty real.)

“And here I thought the fantasy part of this was going to be me taking you apart.” Billy popped open the button on Teddy’s cargo pants; the air was cold, since he was going commando, but the pressure of his lips on the tip of Teddy’s hard cock, the rest of his dick covered by his pants and Billy’s cupping hand – Jesus Christ, it was enough to drive a guy entirely out of his mind.

“My birthday,” Billy retorted, stripping his shirt off over his head, “my fantasy, right?” He never stopped being beautiful, even if he couldn’t see it the way Teddy could. He was all lean muscle, taut and sleek, dark hair marking out the contours of his chest. He’d been skinny when they first met, all elbows and scraped-up knees, and now he was still Billy, still that glorious, brilliant, bitingly funny boy, but refined, grown up, his ranginess turned to firm power and his power burning intoxicatingly bright in his warm brown eyes. “How often do I get Superboy at my disposal?”

“As often as you want him,” Teddy promised breathlessly, as Billy unbuttoned his own jeans and slid out of them, the outline of his hard cock pressing against the thin cotton of his briefs. “I have the _best_ view from here.” He wanted to grab, to touch and stroke and bite him, suck on his lips and his dick, taste everything that Billy ever was and would be-

But his hands clenched helplessly in the air, the silk around his wrists snug and tight enough to keep him hard in place. Billy bent down, then, sucked Teddy’s cock into his mouth, and the world narrowed to that sensation, hot and tight and so wet-slick, the motion of Billy’s tongue along the bottom insistent and cruel, driving him up, up,- Teddy thrust, pulled his hands down until something creaked and started to snap, he needed, needed –

Billy said something and waved a hand, the bonds around Teddy’s wrists firming up again, strong enough that he could pull and writhe and never break free.

He sank into it, into the knowing and the feeling, into Billy’s mouth on his cock, his tongue stroking Teddy’s balls, lower, lower, until all of Teddy’s skin was on fire with sensation and the tickling of every nerve ending. He tugged and nothing gave, he bent his knees and Billy slid between them, his hands teasing and probing, his mouth insistent and never enough, pulling back and letting the cool night breeze sweep over Teddy. A few good thrusts and he’d be gone, over the edge, screaming out Billy’s name into the night, but he didn’t get that chance.

“Billy, _please,”_ he caught himself begging, his pants around his knees now and Billy’s tongue insistent at his hard nipples. “I want to touch you, I-“

“Who’s Billy?” Billy teased, brushing his lips gently across Teddy’s. “If you’re Kon, I’m Tim, remember? Your idea.”

“Bad idea,” Teddy groaned, rocking his hips up against air in search of pressure, friction, _anything!_ “Tim’s a control-freak jerk.”

Billy moved, then, his weight leaving Teddy’s chest, and then there was silence. Teddy opened his eyes, looked around the apartment-that-wasn’t-theirs, but then Billy was back, bottle of lube in one hand and his fingers slicked up on the other. Teddy could only watch, his mouth dry and cock aching, so hard, so painful, while Billy opened himself up, his own dick hard and flushed red-purple, bouncing up against his flat stomach as Billy thrust down on his own fingers, head tipped back in the dim light and his mouth open with his gasps.

“Billlllllly,” Teddy whined, not proud of the sound. He curled his hands into fists, pulled against the ties, but the sparking flares of Billy’s magic now held them secure. “Please, please-“

“Say it,” Billy murmured, pressing kisses down around Teddy’s face, his lips, hovering over Teddy’s body and not allowing contact. “I want you to say it.”

“Oh no,” Teddy groaned, and when he opened his eyes once more, Billy was laughing at him, only a couple of inches above his face. “Seriously?”

“Saaaaaaaay it.”

Teddy sighed. “Gotham needs you,” he said, then, more earnestly, “ _I_ need you. As soon as possible. Now, ideally.”

He got a deep kiss with tongue in return, and Billy grabbed Teddy’s cock by the base. He was so tight when he sank down onto Teddy, despite the prep; so tight and hot, pulling Teddy deep inside his body. Billy leaned forward, grabbed Teddy’s hands and laced his fingers in tight, and then he began to move. He moved, his hips rocking, taking Teddy in deep, so deep, as Teddy arched and thrust and tried to keep up with Billy’s insistent, rapid pace.

“Fuck me,” Billy begged, driving himself down on Teddy’s dick. “With all your strength. You can’t break me. You won’t hurt me.”

That was the end of everything for Teddy; he let go the last of his rapidly-waning control over his strength. He drew his knees up and pressed his feet against the mattress for leverage, Billy’s hands and magic still so tight around his wrists, keeping him steady, keeping them both safe. He thrust up, buried himself balls-deep inside Billy’s unbelievable heat, the friction so good, so very good, and he was coming close to the edge.

And Billy leaned forward to bite Teddy’s earlobe, his hips flicking and rolling as he took Teddy deeper. “Be you again,” he murmured, his voice catching and his cock rubbing, hard, between their bellies. “Go back to you.”

Teddy let go the shift, his own face and body snapping back into focus. Billy watched the whole time, then rocked down, took Teddy deeper than ever before. He arched, grabbed his dick, stroked himself once, twice, and he was gone, shooting white and hot all over Teddy’s chest, his collarbone, splatters of come even landing on his throat and chin.

It was impossible to last any longer, not seeing that, tasting Billy’s come on his lips, looking at the redness of the flush that swept down his entire body. “Billy,” Teddy keened, dragging hard against the bindings. He needed, he needed so bad, and the pressure was building up in his spine, drawing his balls up tight and close. He saw blue lightning behind his eyes when he came; Billy’s blue lightning, his magic, his power. Teddy arched and writhed, his hands held tight, Billy’s fingers laced through his and Billy’s mouth tight over his as well.

“Fuck yeah.” Were the only words he could manage to get out.

Their room closed back in around them, Tim’s spacious bedroom at Stately Wayne Manor vanishing to be replaced by Billy and Teddy’s near-disaster of a tiny walk-up apartment. Billy released his arms, Teddy tugging on the slipknot until the physical bindings slipped away. They curled around each other, bodies slick with sweat and Teddy’s arms aching slightly. That ache was already fading away, replaced with the gentle tingle of healing.

It was too damn bad that he had a healing factor, some days. It would have been good to stretch and feel it in his shoulders the next day, the powerful physical reminders of Billy’s love, their passion.

As if he could read Teddy’s mind, Billy smoothed his hand along Teddy’s raised arms, stroking his thumb along the curves and swells of Teddy’s muscles. “We’ll just have to do that again, sometime,” he offered. He smiled, and the sun, moon and stars were eclipsed. “Soon, maybe.”

“It’s a deal.”


	4. Never Have I Ever

_Prompt: Billy/Teddy David would be interesting. :)_

 

“Never have I ever.” America frowned into her glass. “I’m not entirely clear on what the end goal of this is.”

“Humiliation, bonding and drunken-ness, in that order.” Kate reached across and topped up Billy’s glass from the bottle of whiskey that had appeared out of her massive purse.

Eli rolled his eyes, arms folded in front of him. He still had windburn red on his cheeks from the trip that Tommy would only describe as ‘totally necessary, dude.’ “Only Kate brings a hundred-dollar bottle of hooch to a drinking game.”

“Admit it, Eli; you missed us.”

“Like chicken pox.”

“Never have I ever,” America repeated thoughtfully, and looked around the circle of new and old Young Avengers, as though gauging the efficacy of an attack. “Slept with a man,” she offered. Eli pushed his glass away, and Cassie looked thoughtful.

“Does it count if-“

“Male parts?”

“Well, yes, but-“

“Totally counts. In that situation.”

The whiskey burned hot down Billy’s throat, and Teddy leaned over to kiss it off his lips without hesitation. Kate drank. _Tommy_ drank, and they all stopped and stared.

He shrugged, totally unscandalized. “Gotta try something to figure out if you like it. Turns out the answer’s no.”     

“That... is way more than I needed to know about you,” Billy replied, the alcohol burning low in his stomach and his fingertips gone all tingly.

“Suck it up, little bro.”

David stayed uncharacteristically quiet through it all. Teddy nudged Billy’s thigh, nodding toward where he sat just outside the edge of the circle, frowning into his glass. David didn’t look up.

\--

“Never?”

“That surprises you? It’s not like I’ve been out for very long. Even to myself.”

The party had dissolved as the early morning crept in. Tommy had vanished with Eli, theoretically running him back to Arizona, and the girls had taken off to talk about... whatever it was that girls talked about at sleepover parties when one of them had only recently come back from the dead. That left Billy, Teddy and David alone in the old factory that had once served as their base of operations. It was a combination Billy hadn’t been entirely thrilled about at first, but David ... yeah. David was slowly growing on him. It wasn’t like he’d done anything about Teddy since, and even kissing Tommy once had apparently not gone anywhere.

Given that David hadn’t had a drink, and Tommy had.

That had to sting. Was that two for two rejections? He was taking it a lot better than Billy would have, especially considering he was hanging out with both of them a lot of the time, these days.

“I dunno,” Teddy said, shrugging. He leaned back against the couch, curling his feet under him. “Depends whether it’s something you want, I guess.”

David stood up abruptly, heading for the almost-empty bottle that Kate had left behind. He poured the last of it into his glass, and swallowed it down. “Never said that I didn’t,” he replied, and that flash of sympathy and ... whatever else it had been in Billy’s chest swelled to something bigger. “I’m not always good with change. Even when it’s not really a change at all.”

Why should he be angry at David? He’d won, after all. Teddy was his, unequivocally and whole-hearted. They’d made promises again, first in soft whispers, then in rings on their fingers; there was no question now that he would ever leave.

David wasn’t a threat. He was just a guy, and a lot lonelier than Billy had realized. Teddy had seen it first; he was always so much better at reading people.

Speaking of Teddy- he looked at Billy, and there was a question in his eyes. Billy turned the idea over in his mind, poking around the edges of the probabilities, the problems it could create, the things it could solve.

They stood up together, as simpatico as the time Emma had linked their minds, the moment that Billy had finally understood the depth and power of Teddy’s love, finally been absolutely certain of his total devotion.

“So we were thinking,” Billy said, and he leaned against the desk on one side of David.

“When?” David frowned.

“Just now,” Teddy replied.

“I hate when you guys do that.”

“We were thinking,” Billy went on, cocking his head. David had been attracted to Teddy, and he had been attracted to Tommy, so by all rights, Billy shouldn’t be the one to entirely repulse him. “That there’s a difference between theory and practice.”

“I’m not getting you-“ David paused. He looked at Teddy, then back at Billy, at the way they flanked him, and at the dredges of the alcohol in his glass. “Are you serious?”

“Sure,” Teddy shrugged. “How better to get over the hump-“

Billy snickered, giddy and light, and David glared at him.

“-Than with friends? Then you’ll have some practice to compare to all that theory you’ve been dragging around in your head, and it’ll be a lot less scary.”

“I never said I was scared,” David protested hotly.  

“Really?” Teddy asked softly. “I was. It was huge- shut up, Billy – and new and terrifying. But amazing all the same.”

There was a long pause, the alcohol making Billy’s pulse thrum hot in his ears. “If this all goes to shit,” David said finally, “I’m not taking the blame.”

“As long as it doesn’t affect the team.” Billy’s hands had started to sweat a bit, his palms damp. He scrubbed them off on his denim-covered thighs, and David watched the movement, his throat bobbing with a reflexive swallow. “Anything else, we can figure out between us.”

“How do we even start?” David asked, after a silence that seemed to drag on.

“First, you kiss Billy,” Teddy ordered in his bossy voice, and Billy’s heart picked up speed at the sound. “Because that’s the only link missing now. And then we see where it goes.”

David wasn’t Teddy; he wasn’t even Nate, or Jimmy Stedham. But his soft, searching, tentative kiss was good, the flicker of his tongue careful and controlled. He wasn’t anything like Teddy, and that was amazing, because when Teddy followed David’s mouth with his own, covering Billy’s lips and delving deep, claiming his territory back-

-it was a whole new kind of good all on its own.

‘Never have I ever had a threesome with a teammate.’ Kate was going to kill him. Weirdly enough, it felt like it could be worth it.   


	5. Is It Too Late Now to Say Sorry?

_How about a Billy/Teddy makeup prompt. They've been fighting, the reason can be up to you but maybe Teddy was the one to mess up. And they finally make up. Makeup sex is always fun too._

 

Billy’s still not talking to him. Ten hours is a whole new record, at least since The Time They Don’t Discuss. It approached ridiculous somewhere around breakfast, and now it’s shot right past that and into ‘stupid’ mode.

Teddy knows he screwed up; it wasn’t the first time and it probably won’t be the last, either. They’re just kids, after all, figuring things out together. Billy’s not exactly perfect either; he’s just perfect-for-Teddy, even if he’s not seeing it right now.

That’s what the flowers are for. They’re a cliché, sure, but going out to buy them got him out of their tiny little apartment for a half hour. It should have been long enough for Billy to get over himself when he doesn’t have someone to be aggressively silent at, but he’s still in the kitchen banging pots together and seething when Teddy quietly closes the door with the chipped and peeling paint behind himself.

“Bee?” He’s not a hundred percent sure what he’s expecting when he comes around the corner, but there Billy is, scouring out the groddy old roasting pan, his cheeks all stubbly in protest.

(Teddy hates getting beard burn, and Billy knows it. It’s just rough enough to be deeply annoying, and not painful enough for his healing factor to do anything about it.)

Still, he has some grovelling to do, so asking Billy to go shave isn’t on the top of his to-do list.

Billy glances back over his shoulder, and there’s a flicker in his eye and at the set corners of his mouth that makes all the difference. “What?”

“You’re still angry, I know.” Teddy holds out the bouquet, mixed roses from the stall down the street, and leans his hip against the counter so that Billy would have to look at him. “I’m sorry.” He drops his head and lifts his eyes, watching Billy’s reactions. “Will you accept my apology?”

Billy folds his arms and scowls, and he’s not intending to make this easy. Of course not. It stings, the faint smell of desperation in the air undoubtedly coming off of Teddy, but hell. This boy – this _man –_ is his everything, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make this oppressive silent treatment go away.

“Please,” he tries again, then sets the flowers down on the counter, clasping Billy’s wet hands in his. “I’m _so_ sorry. I screwed up, and you have every right to be angry. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, not again, but if you could just find it in your heart to give me one more chance. I swear it won’t happen again.”

Billy’s staring at the flowers, then back at Teddy, but he’s not going to let this go away easily. He can be so damn stubborn, and at all the wrong things. “How can I know you’re telling the truth, tee? You’ve lied to me before.”

“I never did!” But he’s the one in hot water here, so ... “there were things I didn’t tell you right away, yeah. But I never _lied._ Not to you.” He’s got a glimmer of a hail-Mary idea now, and it might be a very bad call, but it might also get off the hook. “Like when you didn’t wake me up before bailing to Latveria, remember? You didn’t lie, but that wasn’t exactly honest, either.”

“That was years ago, Tee. Dirty pool.”

“And so was the sneaking out to superhero thing. Long over and forgiven.” He rests his hands on Billy’s hips, in an experiment, and Billy doesn’t pull away. “Right?”

“Yeah, maybe.” He’s got his arms folded across his chest between them, and he stares out the window instead of looking Teddy in the eye. It’s easier to hide what he’s feeling that way; Teddy knows the move well.

Take to take a risk, Ted.

He bends his head, slowly so that Billy can register what he’s doing and have a chance to pull away. He doesn’t, and Teddy presses his lips against the spot where Billy’s neck joins his shoulder, his t-shirt soft against Teddy’s lips. He leaves delicate, dry kisses up Billy’s neck, below his ear, on the corner of his jaw. “Please,” he whispers.

“Say it,” Billy says, and in that moment all is forgiven.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Teddy pulls him closer, arms around Billy’s waist now, and Billy doesn’t struggle away, but he’s not quite melting yet. 

“For what?” Billy asks sharply, and pulls away so that they’re making eye contact once more. Confession time. Teddy hangs his head.

“The blue shell. That was mean.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“And the gloating. That was uncalled for.”

“And what else?”

“Shouting ‘suck my balls and eat my dust, Kaplan’ was rude. As was the touchdown dance.”

Billy’s trembling a little bit, but it’s laughter that he’s holding in. “Better. Now, promise me never to do it again.”

Teddy snickers, and he leaves a round, red hickey on Billy’s neck, right above where any of his collars will actually cover. Billy’s mouth finds his and it’s warm and sweet, all the things he loves best in the world in one perfect, searing kiss.

“It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission,” he says, then fishes out his DS from his back pocket. Better to take it with him than risk Billy pitching it out the window. Again. He grins, wide, and Billy just shakes his head, laughing. “Rematch?”

 


	6. Enough Potatoes

_Prompt: Billy/Teddy doing something holiday-ish. Could be anything. Christmas Shopping to being at the holiday Avengers party to being caught under the mistletoe. Literally anything, as long as it's Holiday themed!_

 

“Bubbe! It’s Billy.”

“Bubbeleh! So good to hear your voice. How are you doing? Your mother tells me that you and Theodore are keeping house now.”

“We are, yeah. We’ve got a place not too far from school.”

“Good! You pay attention to your studies, now; don’t let that gorgeous young man of yours distract you too badly.”

“Bubbe!”

“Hush now; like I don’t know what you kids get up to? I was young once too, you know.”

“There’s a difference between knowing and _knowing_ , Bubs. I’m actually calling to ask you something.”

“Whatever you need, bubbeleh. Anything for my oldest grandson.”

“Could you tell me your latke recipe? Mom broke her arm and Teddy and I agreed to host the dinner for Hannukah this year.”

“You’ve been eating my latkes for twenty years and you don’t know how to make them?”

“Eating’s not making.”

“True. Alright. You have pen and paper? So you take potatoes.”

“Potatoes. Any particular kind?”

“Potatoes-potatoes. Don’t be fancy, boychik.”

“How many?”

“What do you mean how many? Enough is how many. You need enough potatoes to feed everyone.”

“But, like, five? Or ten, or-“

“Enough potatoes! That’s all. Do you have small potatoes or big ones? I don’t know from numbers.”

“Fine. Lemme write that down. Enough potatoes. _I’ll figure it out, Tee._  Okay, Bubbe. First I take enough potatoes. Then what?”

“Wash them, peel them, grate them, put them in a bowl. Then grate in some onion.”

“I’m going to regret asking this, but how much onion?”

“How much onion? Enough onion. It depends on how many potatoes.”

“Of course it does. What else?”

“A tablespoon flour.”

“Oh, thank God. A measurement.”

“Unless it’s not enough, then put more.”

“Bubbe-“

“And egg.”

“How many eggs, he asked, despairingly?”

“Enough to make it stick.”

“ _Teddy, stop laughing, or I swear to God I will zap you_.”

“Billy?”

“Not you, Bubbe. Then what do I do?”

“Take the latkes and squeeze out the water until the mix feels right. Wash your hands first!”

“Hang on; how does ‘right’ feel?”

“Not too wet, not too dry. Until they feel right! You’ll know.”

“Ohh-kay.  Squeeze until they feel right. _You can leave the kitchen any time, Teddy. Or go find me ‘enough potatoes.’ Smartass._ Then what?”

“You take some oil and you heat it up in the pan. Watch out for splatters, now! And put the latke in the pan, press it down, let it cook until the edges are brown.  You know what else you need? Herring.”

“Herring in the latkes?”

“Herring for a holiday! Your great-uncle Maury always made the nicest herring for holidays. It’s not a simcha without Maury’s herring, that’s what we used to say. Herring, and latkes mit sour cream and apple sauce. You need to get some apple sauce as well. And doughnuts. Then it will be like the old days.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Bubbe. We’ll come by to pick you up Thursday afternoon, okay?”

“You’re a good boy, Billy. A good boy.”

“I love you too. I’ll see you Thursday.”

_Teddy, get your ass back here. I’m not peeling these stupid things alone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the recipe discussion is almost verbatim from a conversation I had with my own Bubbe, may her memory be a blessing. (Let her live on as a Kaplan!)


	7. Green Men From Outer Space

_Really-an-alien Teddy, please!_

\--

 _Don’t go to Earth_ , that’s what every lecture about interstellar travel had drummed in to all of them practically since birth. _It’s a planet full of trigger-happy apes still learning which end of the atom is up._ The third Kree-Skrull treaty even added a section about proscribed planets, ones that both empires were forbidden to engage, and Earth was right at the top of the list.

It wasn’t that Dorrek _intended_ to break the rules, it was just that the brief glimpses he’d intercepted on the comms had been so _interesting_. 

And then there had been the wreck of a probe, floating in the Khyber belt around Ceti Prime. He’d had the engineers pull it in to take a closer look. They’d grumbled about it, sure, but it wasn’t like they were going to say no to the Crown Prince, even if he _was_ taking a few unauthorized liberties.

The probe – or satellite, or whatever it was – had come with more than just Earth germs.

(And honestly, sterile decontamination would have fixed all of that, if the hard radiation of space hadn’t eradicated everything already. What could possibly come in on a probe—even if it was an Earth-probe—that could get the medical officer’s frill turning purple with irritation, or flushed red for anxiety?)

It had carried music. Music, and codes to be broken, equations and ideas- things he pored over in his quarters, teasing out the secrets of this strange, forbidden world.

So he’d done the thing.   

It had only been a very small science vessel. No-one would ever notice him missing, not for a tenday or more. He was supposed to be studying, and in a way, he was.

Floating outside the orbit of their moon, far enough away that their instruments wouldn’t pick him up, he studied Earth.

(Everyone had agreed on that point — Earth might be working its shaking way toward spaceflight, but they didn’t have even the most rudimentary planetary defences, or system sensors. They were too busy fighting each other to look outward. Two of their sun-orbits ago, there had been an explosion on the planet’s surface so large that the empire’s sensor networks had picked it up. _Nuclear_ , one of the exo-physicists had told him, when he’d asked. _Another symptom of their barbarity. Now come, your highness, there is other work to be done. Your testing is only another year away._ )

The Great Peace had done a lot of good for the empire, Dorrek considered ruefully, but cramming a thousand years worth of treaties and embargoes, legal precedents and cross-cultural etiquette into his head made him long for the days when all an emperor had to do was send an army in and lay waste.

At least back then there hadn’t been _exams_.

And at least here, his engines turned off and no-one in the small round ship but him, he could look in on his favourite escapist entertainment and not have to think about the crushing weight of responsibility that was breathing down his neck.

He spun around in the pilot’s seat, put his feet up on the control panel, and swiped his hand through the holographic controls. The broadcast signals always took a little while to solidify, and he waited for the shaky black and white images to coalesce.

 _“June 14 th, 1947 – welcome to your nightly news.” _The sound kicked in before the visuals, and Dorrek closed his eyes for a moment. What would it be like, living down there? Not knowing anything about the vast and busy galaxy outside the planetary system, being so totally unaware of the most mundane aspects of galactic empire.

It would be easier, somehow. To just lie back and relax, take life one day at a time, only have to worry about one tiny planet —or better yet, one little continent on one tiny planet—and let the rest of the universe do its own thing, far away.

He could do it, run away to Earth for a little while. He could blend in—he’d seen enough of their broadcasts to know what the average human male looked like. Yellow hair, blue eyes, a flat jaw instead of segmented, skin of a shade similar to the pink Kree, but with a little more cream in it. Dorrek shifted to that to test the feeling, the ripple of change passing over and through his skin quicker than he could consciously construct the image.

The beeping in the cockpit started while he had his eyes closed, and the second it took him to open them was a second too long. The blast caught the thrusters on the right side of the survey ship’s disc, knocking him out of his careful orbit.

The second knocked the ship sideways and flung him to the floor even as he scrambled for the controls, the ship flipping upside down, hurtling faster than the inertial dampeners were designed to handle, spinning over and over again until he was absolutely sure he was going to be sick.  

His comm system crackled into life, a new and unfamiliar voice gloating overtop of the calm and steady voice of the Earth newscaster.

“Death to the Skrull conquerors!”

The blue-green planet below hurtled up to meet him, the ship careening out of control. Dorrek struggled for air, lost his lunch, his blood boiling in the heat of unprepared planetary entry-

He passed out as the heat shielding finally kicked in, just in time to feel the edge of the saucer slam into the ground. Everything stopped, and everything went black.

-

“ _Residents of Roswell, New Mexico reported seeing a strange object falling from the sky yesterday. University of New Mexico astronomer Dr. Bill Kaplan suggested to this reporter that the object could have been a meteorite, or possibly a piece of an asteroid from the belt between Jupiter and Mars. Further investigation is ongoing.”_

-

Bill Kaplan had the kind of job that didn’t lend itself to panicked drives into the desert at two in the morning. Normally he’d be back at the observatory, head down in his telescopes, or home in bed, sleeping off the previous night’s research binges. But tonight—tonight things had been in the sky that shouldn’t have been, and it was only by sheer dumb luck and coincidence that he’d caught sight of the edge of the fireball as the whatever-it-was had landed.

Flinging his plans to the wind and launching himself down the observatory stairs, he’d made it to his car and down the winding road toward Roswell before really stopping to catch his breath. The glow of the meteor strike had faded from the horizon minutes after the object had landed, now he had nothing but a paper map, his memory of the trajectory, and half a tank of gas to get him to ground zero.

Broken limbs and singed leaves on the trees kept him hurtling down the back country roads long after he’d lost track of where he was on the map. The meteor fell on a shallow trajectory—strange, unless it had hit something that could have changed its direction... Bill pulled the car over to the shoulder and got out, staring at the place where, by all rights, the impact crater should have been.

There was no crater. There was a long trench dug into the ground, then open space, then another, similar gouge in the earth, as though something had landed, then skipped, then landed again.

He left his coat and hat in the car, didn’t care about anything except digging his box brownie camera out of the trunk before he set off across the field at a run. The flash – wait; he couldn’t do any kind of documentation without it. It was then, stopped for a moment at the still-smoking edge of the second trench, the grass burned away and the ground warm beneath his feet, that Bill heard the voice.

Not a voice, a moan, like someone hurt, and it was coming from somewhere close to the edge of the trench.

He’d passed the drive in to a ranch—what if it was one of the ranch hands, struck by debris, or burned by the incredible heat of an object burning up in the atmosphere?

It didn’t take more than that to convince him. He slid down the new-cut trench, grabbing at the dirt with his bare hands to slow himself down, pieces of molten rock grabbing at his slacks and sportscoat, digging in to his bare hands.

_Someone is hurt out here, and I’m the only one who can help._

When you put it like that, what did a few burns matter?

  _But that._.. Bill stopped dead (poor choice of words) and stared at the scene in front of him. The object at the end of the trench was no asteroid or meteorite, nothing at all like the ragged-edged chunks of space rock he’d first seen in undergrad. Where the rocks were sooty and melted-looking, this object was smooth and round, almost disc-shaped. It was hard to tell, with the front – side? Back? – lodged deep into the ground. It was far larger than the fist-sized lumps they had on display in the museum, big enough to be... a transport, somehow.

_But who? And from where?_

The moan sounded again, jolting Bill into action. Soil had collapsed along the edge of the trench, some piece of the disc fallen off, dislodging the rocks with the impact. And beneath it, a hand, looking as human as anything Bill had ever seen.

_The rancher._

The man was still breathing, his chest rising in shallow bursts as Bill flung the smaller rocks away, dug him out of the dirt with his bare hands. His camera bounced against his hip, half-forgotten until it was in the way, and he flung it aside in frustration.

By all rights, the man should have been crushed, broken by the impact, or the trench collapse, or whatever it was that had first knocked him flat. The worst of his injuries seemed to be a gash on his head, just above his eye, and even that almost seemed to get smaller as Bill brushed the dirt away from the stranger’s face. _Trick of the light_.

Kneeling there in the trench, the injured man unconscious before him, Bill leaned down to get a better look. _Holy Hannah._ He’d never seen a more perfectly beautiful man in his life—fair haired, with a movie-star jaw, he was— well, he was far too pretty to be out here in the ground, in a rancher’s field.

The man’s eyes opened. Blue. They were so blue that they seemed unreal, too intense, too bright, too... _too much_. Bill’s breath caught in his throat, and the bells and alarm in the back of his brain that screamed _danger_ kicked into high overdrive.

Blond, blue-eyed, his hands broad and what Bill could see of his body shape under the strange dark uniform he had on, muscled and fit – he could have stepped straight out of any one of the Third Reich’s recruitment posters.

_And I know very well what men like that have done to men like me._

But even as Bill froze, the man began to cough, and better instinct took over. Even if this man was a German, even if he’d somehow crashed a Nazi ship into a New Mexico ranch, in this moment he was still just a human being.

And he wasn’t armed, which didn’t make Bill’s next move quite as stupid as it might have been. He reached out, and clasped the man’s arm, helped him sit up with a hand to his back, for support. The touch sent tingles running through him; how long had it been since he’d dared?

“What happened?” Bill blurted out, rather than let himself think about dangerous things. “Did that thing land on you? Where are you hurt? It’s not far to the ranchhouse, but I don’t know how long it will be before they can get an ambulance out from Roswell this time of night.”

“No, don’t call anyone,” the man said, and he coughed, dirt embedded in his skin and blood dark against his hair. He had an American accent, flat and Midwestern, not from around here. And not from home, either, the rapid New York patter that Bill had only just begun to shake after three years in the desert. “I’ll be alright, I just need-“

Most importantly, not Axis. Not the enemy.

“You need a doctor,” Bill insisted. “You were knocked out, that could have done more damage than you know.”

The man smiled, weirdly, a flicker of something at the corners of his mouth, and he shook his head, first experimentally, tentatively, and then again as though he’d realized it didn’t hurt. “I think I’ll be alright. I don’t want to go to a medic. Do you have water, or...” it was then that he looked around, his eyes landing on the sleek, shining hull of the whatever-it-was, and Bill swore he could see the blood drain from the stranger’s face. When he swore under his breath it was in a language that Bill didn’t recognize, but the tone was more than enough to get the meaning across.

A hint of a suspicion started to tingle in the back of Bill’s mind, but he shoved it away.

Impossible things always turned out to be explainable; that was why he’d gone into science when he had. How he’d ended up lucky enough to serve in the war in some way other than fighting, or bleeding out in the trenches.

Except now he was sitting in a very different kind of trench, with a man who was regaining his colour by the moment. And who was trying to stand up.

“Sit down!” Bill ordered, and surprise flashed across the stranger’s face.

“I need to get up, I need to get out of here,” he insisted. And for some reason, he looked up, and nervously scanned the sky.

And he was going to ignore Bill’s very good advice and get up anyway, so Bill reached for his arm, he got himself underneath the man’s arm, settled his weight on Bill’s shoulders. _He is a whole lot heavier than he looks._ He had to be almost entirely muscle, muscle and heat and a body pressed close against his.  

“I’m Bill, by the way,” he introduced himself, as he slowly picked his way up the shallowest side of the collapsing trench, the stranger’s arm over his shoulders and their steps small and careful. He didn’t give his last name yet. Just in case.

There was a lengthy pause, then, “Derek,” the man replied, or at least that’s what it sounded like.

“Well, Derek,” Bill said, and Derek’s shoulders shook like he was suppressing a laugh – why? – “if you won’t go to a hospital, and you won’t let me call someone to come to you, where do I take you? I’ve got a car, but I need to buy gas to get you any further than town. But I can get you to a phone. Who do you need me to call?”

They reached the top of the trench and the unburned grass, and Derek let go, sagged down to sit on the field. He splayed his hands out and stared around him as though he was seeing everything for the first time —a field, a tree, Bill himself-

 _His wound is gone._ The gash that Bill had tried to clean himself was nothing more now than a line of dried blood. It was impossible to see more clearly than that in the darkness, but one thing he could see now was the dark purple and black uniform, shredded now by the rocks and the force of the impact. The fabric – it wasn’t torn, per se, it was stretching itself back as he watched, as though the fibres themselves were trying to knit themselves back into a whole.

Derek looked up at the stars, then, fear and helplessness flashing across his face for an instant.

Bill, crouched beside him, saw a galaxy reflected in Derek’s too-bright blue eyes. 

He reached out and set his hand on Derek’s shoulder, a gesture of comfort, nothing more. But Derek turned his head and brushed his cheek against Bill’s hand, nothing more than an accident he was sure. But in that instant of connection, skin to skin and eyes to eyes, a spark of _knowing_ , of _understanding_ , (of attraction, let’s be real here for a moment, _William_ ) flew between them.

“Who are you?” Bill found himself asking. “What is that thing?”

“What would you say,” Derek said, speaking slowly, each word weighed and measured. “If I told you that I was not from here.”

“I’d say that was pretty damned obvious,” Bill shot back, unable to help himself.

Derek smiled. “What if I said I was from out there.” He nodded to the stars. “That I was the prince of a galactic empire, and someone – I don’t know who – wants me dead.”

That rocked Bill back on his heels. He let go of Derek’s shoulder and instantly regretted the loss of contact, the wordless communication that seemed to have been running between them, skin to skin.

_Not possible, not possible, he’s human as I am-_

_The_ spaceship _in the ditch;_

_Surviving something that would have killed a regular man;_

_The cut on his head that isn’t there;_

_The impossible trajectory of the meteorite, that_ would _be possible for a vessel that was spinning out._

_His eyes are too blue._

“I would say,” Bill tested each thing he was going to say, checked the edges for faults. “That saying that kind of thing around here would be the kind of thing that could get a man locked away. I would say that a man with that kind of story to tell had better be very careful about who he says anything to. Until he knows for sure that he can trust them.”

Derek nodded slowly, his eyes dropping from the skies. “Then my name is Derek, and I’m not a criminal, but I am in trouble. And I need somewhere to stay for a few –“ he paused, as though remembering something. “-days. Just until I know that it’s safe to go home.”  

“Can you get home again?” Bill asked, hushed even though there was no-one around for miles who could hear them.

Derek closed his eyes, but he nodded, and his blond hair fell down over his forehead. “Once I know who tried to have me killed-“ he blurted out, then winced. “Yes,” he corrected himself, opening his eyes again. “But not right away.”

Bill nodded and he stood. His choices were obvious now, everything laid out in front of him as slick as a star chart. “I’m a scientist,” he offered. “An astronomer. I was in my observatory when I saw the sh- the _meteor_ land. If there’s anyone here who can help you, it’s me.”

“You sound awfully sure of yourself.” Derek _smiled_ , and the world tilted on its axis one more time.

“That’s because I’m the best, and I’ve got a bunch of certificates on my office wall that say so.”

He held his hand out again, and Derek took it. A spark leapt from one to the other, circled back and settled low in Bill’s gut, the feeling that he could only call by name deep in the night, in the back of his own mind.

_Who knew aliens would be so beautiful?_

“Come stay with me. My apartment is small, but it’s got a shower, and a bed, and safe space where you can rest. I know a little something about being hunted because of something that you are.” He held still, not even chancing a breath.

“Are you sure?” Derek asked. “What if I’m not safe for you?”

It wasn’t meant as innuendo, Bill was so sure, but he couldn’t help the retort. “Then the possibilities really are endless.” He clamped his mouth shut, because now he was going to be in deep trouble. Flirting wasn’t illegal, but everything it led to still was. Life as a convicted felon was no better than no life at all.

But Derek – maybe he didn’t know, or maybe things were different where he came from. Because he smiled, and there was a flash of something in his eyes that could only be called ‘interest,’ deep behind that bright, clear blue. “Lead onward, then,” he said, his voice a dark exhausted rumble. “The offer of somewhere to rest sounds very appealing right now.”

He must have been hellishly tired, because he fell asleep in Bill’s car on the way home. He passed a couple of state troopers on the way, and then a convoy of military vehicles, all of them going back the way he had just come. He pulled away into the darkness of a side lane so they wouldn’t see, wouldn’t stop him and search the car.

Whatever Derek had in his ship —if that’s what it was—would be long gone into government hands by the time he was well enough to go back. Whatever it was he needed in order to get home, it was going to take a while to get their hands back on it.

Bill looked over at the man curled up beside him, his head resting on his bent arm, his eyes closed. And there was all the confirmation that he needed – the proof that he was doing the right thing. This stranger who needed help, who seemed to trust him enough already that he would sleep and leave himself so utterly vulnerable.

_I’ll keep you safe, no matter what I have to do. I swear._

-

_A press release from Doctor Kaplan at the observatory at the University of New Mexico has confirmed it: the mysterious object that crashed outside of Roswell was not a meteorite, but a weather balloon that had been blown off course. Residents are being asked to avoid the area while the salvage operation is in full swing._

_And now, the weather._  


	8. Matchmaker, Matchmaker

_College AU - Teddy hits on Tommy at a bar, but Tommy thinks Teddy would be a great match for his gay brother..._

_\--_

“Over there.” Kate pointed rudely, not caring that half the crowd in the campus bar could see what she was doing. Not that anyone was paying all that much attention, the homecoming week party turning the hole in the wall with sticky floors into a massive wall-to-wall crush and a beer-slinging free-for-all. “He’s hot. Ask him.”

“Kate!” Teddy groaned, tipping his head back. “Come on. I didn’t come to this thing to hook up.”

Kate laughed at him, because even though she was one of his best friends she was still a fountain of bad ideas, and swigged right from the neck of her beer bottle. “And yet, you need it badly.”

He snorted and finished his own, staring morbidly into the last dregs of foam swirling around the bottom. “That’s your official diagnosis?”

Kate put her arm around his shoulder and leaned in close, settling her chin onto the muscle.

“Ow, pointy.”

“Whatever.” She scoffed. “Look, you’ve been back in town for what, three months? And while I’m sure you’re holding out on me about exchange adventures and gorgeous European men-“

“I promise you, I’m not.”

“That’s even sadder. I’m not saying you need a long-term commitment, but you need to get back out there. Try flirting. Buy a guy a drink and see where it goes.” She gave him a shrewd look, and he had the sinking feeling that she wasn’t nearly as tipsy as she was pretending to be. “Your mom would want you to be happy, you know.”

Teddy winced, the dull ache flaring up into something spiky in his throat. “Low blow.”

“No, that would be what would happen if you got off your butt and got a boyfriend.”

And with that he was laughing, Kate’s skewering just the right thing to jolt him out of the mood that was threatening to take him over. He sagged back against the weird vinyl seat, the thumping music from the bar’s sound system enough to make Kate have to tip her head in closer to hear him. Teddy caught sight of the pair of them, reflected in the window against the backdrop of the dark night outside. They looked like a couple this way, leaning in close, easy and relaxed.

He and Kate would never happen, for obvious gay reasons. But it would be nice to have something like that—even if it was only for a little while —with someone that he _would_ want to kiss.

“Fine,” he conceded, setting his empty bottle on the table with the rest of the empties. “Getting back out there. Beginning tonight.”

“Good boy.” Kate ruffled his hair affectionately, and he tipped his head against hers in silent acknowledgement. “What’s the plan, Stan?”

“I’m not planning. If someone comes in who looks interesting-”

“Right.” Kate turned in his chair, letting him go, and she started to survey the mass of people in front of them. “Guy in the skinny jeans and grey shirt, beard, by the speakers.”

Teddy looked, and Kate had decent taste aesthetically, sure—beard guy was hot, objectively speaking, but overall- “Eh. Kate, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but-“

“Don’t chicken out on me now, Altman. Get back on that horse.”

“Find me a guy hung like one and I might.”

“Can’t find what you refuse to look for.”

Fine. He would find someone to hit on, it would end badly, and then she’d get off his case. Self-defeating, maybe, but it wasn’t like he was going to find the love of his life at a random campus bar in the middle of the insanity that was homecoming.   

The dance floor was a lost cause; most people there already had partners, and most of _those_ were straight couples, so no thanks. Groups of friends hanging out at the pool tables weren’t terrible, but then he’d have to really want to meet someone to feel brave enough to approach them in front of a half-dozen of their best friends.

And then there were the guys by the bar, some chatting, some waving down the increasingly frazzled bartender, and- _oh._ One boy, standing off to one side, lean and tall. The amber lighting over the bar cast strong shadows over his angular features, made his skin look almost golden. There was a hard edge to his smile, though, and while his roots were dark, he’d bleached his hair white-blond.

(Not that there was anything wrong with hair dye—it’s just that Teddy had always, invariably, been drawn to ‘tall dark and handsome.’ The kind of boys his mother had laughingly described as ‘Byronesque,’ thick dark hair, lush pouts and all. And while this guy was undeniably good-looking, he was not that.)

 _Picky!_ He could hear Kate’s objection now, if he dared tell her what he was thinking.

“Target acquired?” Kate set her chin on his shoulder again, and leaned her weight against him. “Ooh, very nice choice.”

And that, naturally, was when the busty bartender leaned over to wipe down the bar, and Hot Boy stole a glance down her shirt. She caught him and flicked the washcloth at him, and he said something to her, leaning in like he was flirting.  

Teddy sighed, leaning back against Kate and settling his weight in counterpressure against hers. “Straight.”

But Kate made a soft noise of disagreement, and he could feel her shaking her head beside his ear. “I don’t think so. I’m almost ninety-five percent sure that I’ve seen him before. He was at David’s birthday pub crawl thing last year, while you were still in Germany. And if I’m right, which I always am, then he was _definitely_ grinding up on another guy part of the night. His hair wasn’t peroxide-city back then, but it’s the same boy.”

Bi, then. That was okay. There were a lot of decent bi guys out there. “All I have to do is talk to him, right?”

“Offer to buy him a drink,” Kate recommended, sprawling back in her own chair and toying with the neck of her beer bottle. “You’re out of beer anyway. And if you’re not interested, get his number for me.” He was ninety-five percent certain she was teasing, but whatever. Teddy unfolded himself from the chair, tugged his t-shirt back down from where it had ridden up, and wove his way through the crowd toward the bar.

_All I have to do is talk to him. And you never know. He’s cute. He might just have resting bitch face, and be really sweet after all._

Teddy raked his hand through his hair and shook it to settle it back into place. His jeans rode low on his hips, his shirt was clean and it fit, and really, this was about as good as it got. He wasn’t terrible looking—his track record when he did try was proof of that. He just wasn’t all that sure about trying.

He found himself a space at the bar, a pack of girls leaving just as he got there, and he edged his way in to stake his claim. Hot Boy was still there but the bartender had left, and he was hanging out alone, occasionally checking his phone.

Kate was watching him, and she would punk him forever if he gave up now.

Teddy headed over, his hands in his pockets. Hot Boy did turn to look at him, looked him up and down, but not in the right kind of intense or gratifying way, like a guy who would be interested. Still, he didn’t seem like he was going to punch Teddy in the face just for saying hi, so he may as well start there. He could fake confidence when he needed to.

“Hey,” he opened easily, drawing on every memory of when talking to guys had been easy. “Can I get you another drink? I noticed you were just about done.”

Hot Guy’s eyebrow went up, and he was about to let Teddy down really hard, Teddy was dead certain of it. He braced himself for insults, or even a fist, but instead of attack, a friendly grin spread across Hot Boy’s face. “Nah, I’m good.” He shook the bottle in his hand and something sloshed inside. “Was that a come-on, or a setup for a sales pitch?”

Teddy rocked back on his heels a little, hanging his head sheepishly. “Oh man; I’m that badly out of practice, hunh? Sorry for bugging you.”

“No, it’s cool. I’m flattered.” Hot Boy put his bottle back down on the bar and leaned against it himself, his body language open and friendly. “Tommy. Unfortunately for your luck tonight, I’m also straight.”

Yeah. He should have known. “I’m Teddy.” Teddy shook his head and could only laugh at himself. “And that just figures. First time I go in blind in ages, and I make the wrong call. Thanks for being cool about it.”

Tommy’s phone buzzed and he glanced down at the message. Teddy caught a bit of it out of the corner of his eye, not _intending_ to read it. All he saw before he looked away was **[at the door now].** Tommy was waiting for someone, probably his girlfriend, and Teddy was in the way.

Except Tommy was looking Teddy up and down again, like he was weighing and measuring something. Then he looked over to where Teddy and Kate had been sitting, before Teddy had decided to hit on a straight guy. “It’s not a problem, I mean it. But if you’ve got cash for drinks burning a hole in your pocket, then hang around.”

“Okay...?” Teddy trailed off, not understanding.

Not until Tommy looked over to the door. Teddy followed his gaze, and there was Tommy’s carbon copy getting his hand stamped by the bouncer. The new boy had Tommy’s face, anyway, and the same lean, tautly-muscled body. But his hair and eyes were dark instead of pale, his mouth was sinfully lush, and a button-up shirt rolled up to his elbows exposed forearms that Teddy wanted to bite.

While Tommy hadn’t really pinged, something about this _other_ Tommy was sending Teddy’s gaydar into overdrive. “Oh,” he breathed out, then felt his ears go hot with the embarrassment of being so obvious.  

“Yeah, that’s about what I figured would happen.” Tommy snort-laughed, and swigged from his beer. “That’s Billy, my twin. And while I’m the straight one, he’s as gay as New York Fashion Week on leather day.”  

It explained so much. Teddy kept his eyes on Billy until he was swallowed up by the crowd. Any minute now he would find his way over, and then Teddy would need – _need_ – to find some way to meet him. “Is he seeing anyone? And would it be weird if I ask you to introduce me?”

Tommy only grinned. “Tell you what. You introduce _me_ to that hot friend of yours—assuming she’s not your girlfriend and you’re trolling for a threesome, in which case you _can_ buy me that drink after all-“

“No, definitely not.”

“In that case, hook a guy up, and I’ll return the favour.”

Teddy felt something heavy lift off his shoulders. He looked across the room long enough to catch Kate’s eye. He cocked his head at Tommy in a silent signal, and she paused, then nodded.   _Thank goodness Kate wasn’t shy._

“Yeah,” he said, his heart starting to pound faster and anticipation bubbling hot and fierce in his blood. “You have yourself a deal.”

 

(And that, dear reader, is how Teddy Altman found himself ringing in homecoming week of his junior year at college licking salt for tequila shooters off of Billy Kaplan’s wrist. And then later that night, licking Irish cream off as many other parts of him as he could reach. As far as ‘new beginnings’ go, it turned out much better than he’d ever expected.)

 


	9. U-Tube, I Tube, We all Tube... Eh?

_Canadian-Teddy, with as many stereotypes as you can get in!_

_(Hah! You speak to my interests.)_

_-_

 

“Pssssssst, Billy!”

The hissed call got Billy’s attention, finally, and he glanced up from the stack of study notes and SAT guides spread out on the library table in front of him. Kate dropped her headphones down around her ears and waved him over, grinning wide. It was the kind of grin that promised something entertaining, or at the very least, something more fun than grinding through another stack of math pre-tests.

He slid in to the chair beside her, ducking his head to avoid the glare of the resource librarian sitting at the wide front desk. “What’s up?”

Kate answered with a non-answer, handing him the headphones. The cord headed down and plugged into her computer, not her iPod, and YouTube was open in a tab alongside her practice tests. “Have you seen this one?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “The guy in the tree?”

“This is what you’re doing instead of studying?” Billy leaned in, though, and actually looked at the screen.

The pause screen didn’t look all that exciting, just a blurry shot of a tree branch and what looked like a lake in the background. It wasn’t an account he recognized, either—not one of the famous YouTubers, anyway. Just someone named xavin, with a video called My Canadian Cousin. On the other hand, the number of views was up in the hundreds of thousands, and it had been uploaded when – two weeks ago? Yeesh. If any of his videos ever got that kind of action, he’d be a _very_ happy man.

Kate, meanwhile, snorted at him. “Don’t even. I know you’ve got comic books hidden inside your math book.”

“Captain America is much more interesting than quadratic equations,” Billy admitted. She rolled her eyes and he shrugged. “I’ve got a week. It’s all good. So what is this thing you wanted me to see?”

“A new viral thing – a guy in a tree. It’s been all over the place today. It’s probably staged, of course, but it’s still funny.”  

Billy shrugged, and set the headphones over his ears. Apparently reassured that they weren’t about to start playing Pornhub at top volume, the librarian headed off and left them to watch in peace.

He hit play and the video fuzzed, then restarted. Fullscreen, and Billy found himself looking directly into the stunningly blue eyes of one of the most insanely attractive boys he had ever seen.

“Whoa,” he breathed out, and in the distance, he could hear Kate snicker.

Hot guy was blond, though most of his hair was hidden under a baseball cap. Billy couldn’t make out the band name on his t-shirt, since most of it was covered by the plaid lumber jacket that he was wearing. The jacket would have been a lot more incongruous, and mockable, if the guy wearing it wasn’t actually up a tree.

Yeah. He was sitting on a thick branch of what looked like some kind of huge evergreen, and the camera shook for a moment, showing Billy the long drop down to the forest floor below.

“Hey, Xav,” the guy said, aiming the camera – no, not a camera as such. The quality was pretty shitty, which meant it was more likely to be his cell phone. Whichever it was, he was holding it out and talking to it, and Billy had missed the first line because he’d been so busy staring at the lumberjack of his dreams.

He restarted it, and settled in to watch. “Hey Xav,” the guy said. “This is Teddy, trying out the video function on this thing. I know, I suck, I don’t call enough, but I- uh.” A low bass note sounded from somewhere below, and Teddy glanced down, then grinned sheepishly. “I’ve got some time right now, apparently, so I may as well make the best of it.”

He turned the camera and the view shifted, past his seriously thick forearms, and over a vast forested landscape. Smaller scrub trees grew in the foreground, bright splashes of green against a clear sky as blue as Teddy’s eyes. Wisps of clouds played in the gentle breeze, dancing over the shores of a nearby lake. Here and there bright red trees dotted the verdant green, the fall colours warm and rich.

The edges of the water were white, it had to be ice, earlier than anything Billy saw around home. But unlike the city, nothing was dirty. The sky seemed to stretch on for miles overhead, only a trickle of something that looked like grey smoke in the distance betraying any sign that human beings had infiltrated the pristine landscape.

“So this is Canada,” Teddy reported cheerfully. “Or at least, this is the property in the Bruce, where Gran’s hunting camp is. You’re looking at Joe Dollar Bay, there, where Mom got caught by the pike -- the one that dragged her boat halfway over to Seagull Island before we rescued her. You’ve got to get up here one day, Xav, even if sitting in a deer blind for three days with Uncle Mark really isn’t your thing. By January, we’ll be ice-fishing.”

That same strange honking-rumble sounded again and Teddy looked down, then back at the camera. “You’re probably wondering what that noise is,” he said sheepishly, then slowly turned the camera so it pointed down.

The shot panned down, down the trunk of the tree Teddy was sitting in, down to a large cleft where the trunk had once been split and continued to grow that way.

Down to the jeep that was sitting in the cleft of the tree, wedged between the two halves of the trunk, wheels a good foot off the ground.

Then across, to zoom in on the wide-spread antlers of a gangly example of-

“Is that a moose?” Billy blurted out, and felt, rather than saw, the librarian’s glare.

 The young bull moose looked up at the camera and let out a shaky _gawuuuuunk,_ a plaintive, lovelorn sort of cry. And then it tried to mount the jeep again, forelegs scraping against the fenders.

“Between you and me,” Teddy’s voice sounded behind the camera, “I think he’s working through some confusion.”

The tree shook.

“So, uh.” The camera turned back. “That’s my day so far. How’re things with you?” 

“Gawuuuuuunk,” cried the moose. The jeep stayed silent.

“It gets better, buddy.”

“Gawuuunk.”

“I know. High school sucks for everyone.”

The video ended on that, turning to black with Teddy’s easy patter still going in the background.

“Gawuunk,” Kate whispered in Billy’s ear.

So they got thrown out of the library because Billy couldn’t stop laughing – it was mostly Kate’s fault anyway, for muttering ‘gawunk’ at him every time he’d just about calmed down.

It was fine, he was done with studying for the day, and on the way home, he was already mentally composing a reply. Call it bandwagon jumping on a viral vid, or call it a desperate attempt at getting the attention of the hottest ‘tuber Billy had ever seen, but if there was any chance in hell of making contact with Teddy-in-the-tree, he was going to grab on.

“Hey Kate, any idea where I could get access to a bald eagle, on short notice...?”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one where some of the story is taken from real life. My uncle did eventually get his jeep out of the tree.


	10. Cheesecake.

_A Tumblr flashfic for June 1st - I saw someone in the tags today complaining about all the holiday fic being Passover or Hanukkah-related, and I am guilty as charged. A brief Billy/Teddy interlude. (G-rating, mildly suggestive ending)_

_-_

"Wait, wait, back up." Teddy leaned on the kitchen counter and flipped back through the sauce-spattered old cookbook, one of a half-dozen resting where they’d landed. "Why are there a dozen different cheesecake recipes in the 'Holiday' section?"

Billy looked down from the chair he was standing on, the broken bracket under the shelf stubbornly refusing to let go the rest of the way. The screwdriver jabbed him through his back jeans pocket as he twisted around to glare. "I'm being useful, and you're looking up cheesecake?"

Teddy grinned. "Got all the beefcake I need right here, so..."

"Don't you dare tickle me."

"Wouldn't dream of it. So. Cheesecake?"

Billy sighed and shifted his grip, dropping the pliers onto the counter below in favour of trying the screwdriver again. "It's for Shavuot - the next holiday, in June. The story is that Moses and co. were told not to eat any meat as part of this big preparation deal before getting the ten commandments."

Teddy boosted himself up to sit on the counter and stuck his hand up to support the shelf. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Because of that, we’re not supposed to eat meat on Shavuot either. It’s not a law or anything, just a culture thing. Tradition!” he poked the screwdriver in the air for punctuation. “Which means dairy meals, unless you’re vegan.” Billy gave the screwdriver one last wrench before giving up. “Screw this.”

“So to speak.”

Billy didn’t justify that with an answer, zapping the bracket so it fell off. He could just magic up a better shelf, but he was being good and trying this whole ‘doing things the normal way’ deal. At least until home repair pissed him off enough. “But somewhere in there, cheesecake became a whole thing. And blintzes. Dad always makes this five-cheese macaroni that Mom swears is going to give us all heart attacks by the time we’re thirty.”

“He doesn’t do things halfway.” Teddy nodded with approval, grabbing the new bracket with his free hand and holding it in place until Billy could screw it in. “Is this the right height here?”

“It’s another food-based holiday tradition; you have  _met_  Jews before, right?” Billy cracked, and won a laugh from Teddy in reply. “Move it up a bit so you don’t bash into it again.” The goose-egg on Teddy’s head had healed pretty much instantly, but the shelf stacked with their random assortment of cookbooks hadn’t been nearly as lucky.

Teddy slid sideways as well, setting one knee on either side of Billy’s legs, putting his face about even with Billy’s stomach. Billy braced for him to do something, but he didn’t abuse his access. Yet.

“The other part of the holiday is the all-night study sessions — or as we call them, barely-refereed theological riots. Mom likes to go to the tikkuns at Temple, but I went once and fell asleep partway through. Not even ice-cream could save me.”

Teddy seemed to be mulling it over. “You’re saying that there’s a holiday coming up soon where you’re supposed to eat massive quantities of cheese and ice cream, then argue all night.” He grinned wide. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

Billy had to lean in to get the new screws seated, his shirt riding up. “You sound intrigued.”

“And you’re not?” Teddy laughed lightly, from somewhere down around Billy’s stomach.

“Too much cheesecake, and say farewell to the beefcake you were admiring a moment ago,” he snorted, getting the bracket set quickly before Teddy could surprise him into dropping anything.

“See, that’s what makes it fun. First the up-all-night endurance training, then the eating, then the working off all that extra energy…” he trailed off, his voice thick with suggestion, his knees snug now on either side of Billy’s hips.  

 _The hell with it._  Billy fired off a burst of magic that finished the chore in an eyeblink. He left the screwdriver and the spirit level on the shelf and out of the way, Teddy’s lips finding bare skin beneath the hem of his shirt. “Sold,” he confessed, as Teddy drew him down, pulled him in for a kiss.  

It was a new way of looking at something he’d taken for granted all his life. Teddy seemed to have that knack, of making even the most mundane moments interesting again.  

_And I can’t wait to find out what you’re going to find exciting about something like Succot…_

 


	11. Power Swap

_Flash fic prompt, no editing: Billy/Teddy. Through some mystic confluence or villianous scheme or something their powers have been switched. How do they react and help each other get control?_

-

"This is why we don't touch the glowing alien orbs, Bee."

"How was I to know it would do-- _this_??"

"That needs to go in the team rules, gang. No touching the glowing orbs. Even when they ask you to."

" _Especially_ when they ask you to."

"You guys aren't helping."

“Can’t you just…. Wish it back to normal?” Kate gestured between Billy and Teddy, shaking her head. The purple, crater-pocked landscape of the large moon had seemed desolate when they’d first appeared, brought here by one of Billy’s spells, but the Kree communication station was long gone. The place Carol had told them it would be was nothing but another crater now, and in the cave off to one side -- well, that had been the beginning of the problem.

Billy’s curiosity had been understandable, but that didn’t help much when he was caught in a loop. Teddy could all but trace his train of thought by the way his face and build kept shifting: Billy’s usual, then a flash of Hulkling green ( _he’s thinking about me, that’s sweet_ ), into a green dragon twice his size -- that sent him into Bilbo Baggins for a moment of panic and then back up to stabilize as… Batman? Apparently Batman.

“How do you stop this?” Billy yelped, his hands getting bigger and then smaller again.

Teddy, floating upside down surrounded by blue sparks, wasn’t exactly in the right position to answer. “I don’t think I can, Kate.” The surety that they were stuck this way settled hooks deeper into his brain. “We have to figure out how the orbs did this and reverse it.” Yes, that was right - even if it hadn’t been before, it was right now, and oh _God he was using Billy’s powers._

Oh shit. Okay. Think this through without opening his mouth. Teddy struggled to turn upright again and only succeeded in sending jagged blue bolts of electricity streaking out towards Tommy and Eli.

“Watch where you’re flinging that stuff!” Eli jumped out of the way, Tommy already long gone out of range. “Okay, new game plan. You two-” he pointed at Teddy - upside down - and Billy - now in a monster shape with three arms, three legs, three eyes- _Xorn, Cassie’s last D &D campaign, electric resistance. Got it._ “Billy, stop that. That’s weird. You two stay here and figure this out before you kill yourselves - or worse, us!”

“Over here, guys!” Cassie’s voice called from inside the cave. “I think Tommy found something.”  

“Don’t let him touch _anything_ ,” Eli swore, and took off for the cave at a run, Kate close on his heels.

Teddy closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, like he and Billy had tried back at the very beginning of everything. _“IwanttolandIwanttolandIwanttoland.”_ The sharp shock of his head ramming into the ground rocketed up his spine as he fell to his back with a thud.

“Ow,” Teddy groaned, and pushed himself up to sitting, the hot trickle of wet on the back of his head a sharp and painful surprise. He put his hand to his head and it came away stained with red. _No healing factor. FUCK._

“Teddy!” Billy ran and skidded to a stop on his knees at Teddy’s side, back to himself for the moment, worry etched deep into his expressive face. “Oh no, you’re bleeding. Shit. Does this mean I got your healing as well?” He grabbed Teddy’s face between his hands and stared into Teddy’s eyes. “Say something. Tell me you’re okay.”

Teddy cracked a smile, the pain ebbing. “You sound like your mother when you panic,” he teased lightly, only for Billy’s face to be momentarily replaced with Mrs. Kaplan’s before slipping back to himself. “I’m okay, I think. I just have no idea how long bleeding takes to stop.”

Billy ripped off a piece from the bottom of his cape without hesitation, holding it firm to the back of Teddy’s head. “Too long. Do you want to try healing it? It’s not too hard-”

“And risk growing an extra arm out of the back of my head by accident? I think I’ll pass.”

Like clockwork, something began to bubble and shift behind Billy’s skull, fingers starting to emerge before he turned pale, closed his eyes, and somehow _jiggled_ back into his own skin. “How do you do this? This is _awful._ ”

“You’ve got to stop visualizing everything, for one.” Teddy leaned into Billy’s hand, his presence the one solid point of reference that cancelled out the weird. “Just, find your center. The solid part that’s always you. Focus on that.”

Billy nodded, catching his lower lip in his teeth. After a pause ( _Tim Drake, Jake from Brooklyn 99, a smaller, younger and very much quieter version of Billy with a bruised face and scraped cheek_ ) “What if you don’t have one of those?” he asked softly, a catch in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

Teddy raised his own hand (so strange, feeling so _solid_ for once) and cupped Billy’s cheek, his thumb swiping soft over the high arc of Billy’s purpling cheekbone. “You do. Even if it’s hard to find.”

Billy let out a long, pained breath, and he nodded, his hand still secure against the cut on the back of Teddy’s scalp. “If you say so.” His generous mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “Why can’t I just be you for a while instead? I like that shape a lot.”

“You can borrow it whenever you like.”

Somewhere in there Billy had slid almost back to his usual self, and Teddy tipped his face up to press a kiss to his lips. That grounded him as well, Billy’s lips familiar and true even when everything else was upside down and backwards. A funny crackling warmth sat low in Teddy’s spine, different from the usual heat being close to Billy spread through him, but good at the same time. Billy kissed him back and Teddy leaned in, let the hunger take him, slipping his tongue between Billy’s ready lips-

The crackling heat turned into an electric surge that poured through his every nerve ending, lightning shocks flashing out and scorching the ground. Puffs of singed dirt burst into the thin atmosphere, now tinged with the bright tang of burning ozone.

Thank God Billy _had_ gotten his healing, because he was sitting there at the epicenter, his hair on end, and the ends of his cape smoking.

“That was payback for the time I fried your stereo, wasn’t it?” He managed to get out, running both hands through his hair to shake it back into place.

Teddy couldn’t help the broad grin at the memory -- both of them so turned on they could barely stand it, fumbling with hands and mouths and the first touch of bare skin- the old speakers had been an easy sacrifice to make in exchange for seeing Billy lose control. “Like I said then, it was totally worth it.”

Billy dropped to sit cross-legged in front of him, their knees touching and hands clasped tight. “What if this can’t be changed back? What if we’re stuck with each other’s powers forever?”

That question set off an ache in Teddy’s chest. As much as his powers had meant trouble sometimes, they were so much a part of him that being without them felt like… like losing a limb, or his eyes, or some other desperately vital portion of himself. And Billy, for all his struggles to figure out his powers, he’d feel the same.

Even now Teddy could feel the tug, the whisper of the power that Billy had at his beck and call. He could reshape everything, if he knew how to use them properly, the universe in the palm of his hand. _My One Ring_ , Billy had called it at one point when he was being upset and dramatic, but Teddy could understand some of that a lot better now.

“Then we teach each other what to do,” he said, and the universe moved to make it so. “And we’ll be just fine.”


	12. Comic-con Meet-cute

_Flash fic prompt, no editing: a cute first meet. Maybe at a comic-con or comic store. Or school play._

-

Parents were like the fair folk – every gift they offered came with a price too terrible to name.

You’d think he would have realized this, fifteen years into his life, but Billy had gone ahead and begged for permission to go to the convention anyway. It wasn’t like it was a huge ComicCon, just a little local one, with a couple of days of panels and game rooms, so it shouldn’t have required such a heavy price. But they’d said yes – on condition that he bring his little brothers with him.

Something about a conference (Mom had said), or a book club (Dad had said). Then they’d looked at each other and grinned, and Billy’d had to leave the room before he thought too hard about what his parents wanted to do with a day all to themselves. _Yecch_.

Jacob was old enough to be totally uninterested in any of the cool stuff at the convention, making a beeline for the video game room and declaring to anyone who would listen that he was in no way related to the moron in the hobbit costume. (Billy’d worked hard on it, thank you very much. He had shoes that looked like feet and _everything._ ) That just left Aaron to wrangle, but of course, the moment Billy had stopped to read over the panel listing and figure out where he was supposed to be going next, the eight year old had slipped away and vanished.

“Oh come on,” Billy groaned, looking down the crowded hall, first one way and then the other. Cosplayers taking photographs, hotel staff looking harried, guys at a booth trying to get people to stop and look at their comics- and no little dorkface. “Aaron, this isn’t funny! I can’t go home without you, mom will kill me.”

Billy pushed his way through the crowd heading for the main hall, only to catch sight of his littlest brother heading back his way… alongside a blond guy in Mass Effect armour. Not just beside – it looked like he was being _brought back_ by the guy, who was scanning the crowd and looking for something. Or someone.

“Aaron!” Billy headed for them, and Blond Guy – no, _hot_ blond guy was much more appropriate, because holy _shit_ \- anyway, he smiled, like Billy was the person he’d been searching for.

If only.

“Where did you go?” Billy scolded his brother. “Did he bug you? I’m so sorry. He just took off.” That was when he really looked at the guy who’d brought him back, and – for once – Billy’s words dried up in his mouth.

 _Hot Blond Guy, yeah that fits._ He was taller than Billy, broader in the shoulders, probably a year or two older. And he looked like… like… a young Captain America, all blue eyes and smiles that sent a jolt of electricity like a defibrillator right into the center of Billy’s chest. His costume looked a lot more homemade from up close, so he wasn’t a booth model, but boy he could have been. And he was smiling _at Billy._ And saying something _to Billy_ that Billy hadn’t been listening to at all.

“-saw the ‘if found return to Frodo’ sticker on his back,” Hot Blond Guy finished saying as Billy dragged his eyes away from mapping out his stupid gorgeous face. “That’s a great costume, by the way. Did you make the cloak?”

“I- yeah,” Billy stammered, willing himself not to turn red. “The pants and shirt are from Goodwill and modified, but I made the cloak from a pattern I found online. Do you play Mass Effect, or just like the designs? Not that one’s better than the other, I’m just curious,” he added hastily, and could practically _feel_ Aaron rolling his eyes behind him. But what did Aaron know? It wasn’t like Billy was out to anyone except himself.

Hot Blond Guy didn’t seem to notice Billy’s creeping fluster, which only made him that much more attractive. “Both, but I have to confess that I didn’t actually make the armor myself. A friend of mine did most of the work.”

“Still, you look great. It. It looks great. On you.”

“Billlyyyyyyy,” Aaron whined, tugging at his arm. “Come oooooon. You said we could see cool stuff, but this is _boring_.”

Fratricide was probably a really bad idea. Billy grimaced. “Sorry. Do you have any brothers?”

Hot Blond Guy shook his head, not even bothering to suppress his grin. “Nope.”

“Want one?”

“I’ll pass. And – I think yours is getting a head start again.” Hot Blond Guy pointed behind Billy, and when he turned, Aaron was already making a beeline to the booth where the guys were selling titty comics.  

“Shit. Thanks for finding him,” Billy called back over his shoulder.

“No problem,” Hot Blond Guy- _Shit. I don’t even know his name –_ called back. “See you around, Billy.”

Billy caught up to Aaron seconds before he was going to have to explain to his parents where Aaron had learned the word ‘Orgasmatron’ – thank you, Barbarella reboot – and his hip buzzed. He pulled his phone out of the pouch on his belt, his day getting so much better at the first sight of the text there.

**Nate: It’s set. We’re meeting tomorrow, 6 pm, Avengers Mansion. I’ll bring the other guys and make introductions then.**

Iron Lad. The boy who had appeared and made promises of heroics, of world-saving; who’d suggested that he saw something in Billy’s new and terrifying mutant powers that could become something wonderful.

Billy looked up, and caught sight of Hot Blond Guy — also stopped in the hallway, also looking down at his phone, and also smiling a sort of private, hopeful smile that mirrored the one on Billy’s lips. Then he put his phone back in his pocket and he vanished into the crowd.

And just for a moment, before he remembered that things like that didn’t happen to him… Billy wondered.

_See you around._

**Author's Note:**

> Fandom blog: [Ardatli](http://ardatli.tumblr.com)
> 
> Pro writing: [Tess Bowery](http://www.tessbowery.com) (also on Tumblr, [ here](http://tessbowery.tumblr.com).)


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